In the latest two-day conference on Disability by Sarthak Educational Trust and National Abilympic Association of India centred on the theme Digital Inclusion — Pathway to Empowerment of People with Disability.
It launched the CapSarathi app for the disabled aiming to reach 10 crore differently-abled population reaching out to 718 districts and 664,369 villages in India. The Morning Standard in a conversation with Dr Jitendra Aggarwal, Founder, Sarthak Educational Trust on this new initiative.
Could you talk about the features of this app?
The app is an accessible platform for differently-abled. There is a Help Desk Support to counsel and guide users over chat and calls in Hindi, English, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Bengali. Using the platform, PwD or their family members can access various relevant information about government schemes, policies and provisions such as Disability certificate, pension, transport concessions, reservations and others, details of national and international scholarship programs for PwDs and online resources such as braille-online-audio books, details of assistive devices and matrimonial services among others.
What led you to launch this app?
This joint initiative by Capgemini and Sarthak Educational Trust aims to provide information, services and support to people with disability (PwD) at a click. In India, the population of Persons with Disability (PwDs) is around 26.8 million constituting 2.21 per cent of India’s total population (Census 2011).
However, World Bank data proposes the number between 40-80 million. But, despite the discrepancy between the numbers it is very clear that PwDs constitute a significant part of India’s population. Still they face various disadvantages throughout their lives as the majority of the ecosystem is designed as per the requirement of able bodied individuals.
Explain how the app is designed to empower PwDs?
For the purpose of capturing the needs and extending information and services for differently-abled, support beneficiaries are categorised under six age groups, 0-5 years, 6-11 years, 12-17 years, 18-35 years, 36-50 years and 51 years, and above.
For parents of special children, there is an online screening and counselling support, inside stories and experiences from parents of special children and online guidance for home-based activity sessions for children among others.